ABSTRACT
Written for the most part in 1750–1751, the original manuscript of the Dialogues underwent two major revisions, one in 1757 and one in 1776. At each stage, Hume proposed different conclusions to his reasoning and instructed Philo to support them. Four different philosophical endings are still to be found in the text published in 1779, which correspond to four different approaches to the subject of “Natural [or Rational] Religion”: a rationalist-atheist approach, largely indebted to Bayle (Part XI, 1751), an experimental-theist approach, mostly founded on reasons of convenience (Part XII, 1751); a radical-deist approach influenced by Bolingbroke and coupled with a fideist stance (Part XII, 1757), and a skeptical-atheist approach, which is possibly the consequence of the French debates occasioned by d’Holbach's Système de la Nature (Part XII, 1776). All these philosophical approaches are, however, attended by an “abhorrence” of religion as it is actually practiced.
